The Bubble Genius Bob & Chez Show 8/23/12

Posted on August 25, 2012 at 3:00 am by Bob Cesca

We Debate False Equivalence Versus Fair Criticism; Todd Akin and The Radical Republican Platform; Predictions for the Republican Convention; Sheriff Joe Arpaio at the Convention; We Built This City on Rock and Roll; Ireland’s President Takes Down a Tea Party Radio Guy; Crazy Texas Judge Predicts Civil War; and much more. Brought to you by Bubble Genius!

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  • muselet

    Chez, which Republican Party are you referring to? ‘Cause the one in my reality insists it’s on God’s side (and vice versa), and only when bad things happen to people who aren’t—or who don’t vote—R is it divine retribution.

    Bob, I think Chez had the better argument. And in all honesty the tendency on the Left to take on one of our own is a strength, and it would be even more so if our glorious news media would pull its collective out of its collective. We police our own. That’s the difference between the Left and the Right. At best, the Right will try to explain away an outrageous comment by a Righty. And when some brainless Ken or Barbie trots out the Both Sides/False Equivalence trope, isn’t it good to be able to say, “Yes, but when someone on my side says something asinine, we slap that person down,” even if the response from Ken or Barbie is a blank stare?

    [EXPLETIVE DELETED], does whoever wrote the Weekly Standard piece think writing rooms are Victorian-era salons? I’m too lazy to find specific blog posts, but Ken Levine has pointed out that what’s said in the average comedy writing room would make the average shock jock swoon. If that’s the worst thing Al Franken said in the SNL writing room, I’d be very surprised.

    The Right is angry at Todd Akin because he blew the con. He didn’t say anything the Right doesn’t believe—including the idiocy about a woman’s body knowing the difference between a rapist’s sperm and a non-rapist’s sperm—but he said it out in the open where everyone could hear it. Akin was the shill in a three-card monte game and he said, when the marks could hear him, that the queen’s not where it looks like it should be.

    Joe Arpayaso speaking at the Republican convention is a hilarious thought. The only thing that would make it better is if the feds perp-walk him out of the Tampa Bay Times Forum (won’t happen, but a guy can dream). And Donald Trump addressing the convention is even funnier (I hope I hope I hope his speech is televised in primetime).

    Steve Benen keeps pointing out that if Barack Obama were such a terrible president who had done such terrible things, the Rs wouldn’t have to lie to make their case against him.

    Lesson for the day: never, ever, piss off an Irishman.

    –alopecia

    • http://www.twitter.com/bobcesca_go Bob Cesca

      >>We police our own. That’s the difference between the Left and the Right. At best, the Right will try to explain away an outrageous comment by a Righty. And when some brainless Ken or Barbie trots out the Both Sides/False Equivalence trope, isn’t it good to be able to say, “Yes, but when someone on my side says something asinine, we slap that person down,” even if the response from Ken or Barbie is a blank stare?

      I’ve “slapped down” mistakes by liberals and, to the detriment of my career, “policed” liberals quite often to the point where my hate mail is more liberal than right-wing, but I try not to draw correlations between them and conservatives — especially in the same breath. But okay. Perhaps every time we knock John Boehner, we should bring up something terrible about President Obama. Or whenever Limbaugh pops off about whatever, we should mention a time when Stephanie Miller said something obnoxious.

      • muselet

        I didn’t mean anything like that, and I apologize for giving you that impression.

        –alopecia

        • http://www.twitter.com/bobcesca_go Bob Cesca

          First, you don’t have to apologize for anything, my friend. Seriously. Second, I’m just trying to understand the upside of coupling doofs on the right with doofs on the left. (Dammit, I wish text was better at conveying tone of voice.)

          • muselet

            I’m not trying to couple anyone, you should pardon the expression, and I don’t think Chez was, either (although I certainly don’t speak for him).

            What if Michael Moore and Oliver Stone had tried to redefine rape to suit their political agenda and Todd Akin had kept his gob shut? I think it would have been entirely appropriate to call them out on it, or at the very least give them the internet equivalent of a slow, sad head-shake. Reasonable people can differ, but even though Akin also said something blisteringly stupid on the same subject during the same week, I still think it’s appropriate not to let Moore and Stone off the hook.

            The false equivalence that troubles me isn’t “both sides have people who say and do dumb things” (that’s undeniably true), it’s “both sides have people who say and do dumb things and neither side reins in its dummies.” In recent decades, the Left hasn’t allowed itself to be pulled to the extreme margins of political thought (the Left went through that in the 1960s and ’70s and learned an unpleasant lesson), so the brighter ones among us, yourself included, self-police; the Right has for thirty-odd years let itself be pulled to the extremes and for a number of reasons (hi, Rupert Murdoch!) hasn’t yet suffered for it, so Righties see no reason to worry about the more incendiary things other Righties say. Sooner or later—he said hopefully/naïvely/stupidly (delete according to taste)—even our glorious news media will have to notice.

            I should have been clearer in my original comment, but it was already approaching novella-length. Serves me right for trying to save pixels.

            “Right. Less talking. She’s terse—I can be terse. Once, in flight school, I was laconic.”
            –Hoban “Wash” Washburne, Firefly, “War Stories” written by Cheryl Cain

            If only Todd Akin had held off for a few days before proving his pig-ignorance, we could all have avoided this tsuris.

            –alopecia

  • SlapFat

    Okay, look…. I figured out what the whole fight was about between Bob and Chez. If you’ll give me just a moment I can properly narrate the entire debacle. Ahem:

    So it all started back in the 80′s. Bob and Chez were over at the local pizza joint playing Donkey Kong when all of the sudden Chez spilled chocolate milk on Bob’s favorite Superman comic. Bob started flipping out but couldn’t stop himself to confront Chez because Bob was about to get the high score on Donkey Kong so he started talking about how Chez was a bad friend but Chez couldn’t hear him because he was staring at a group of his 30 girlfriends that he kept by his side at all times so Bob thought he was ignoring him and got angry but used his anger to get the high score in Donkey Kong which catapulted him into local fame which made Chez jealous because his 300 girlfriends thought it was pretty cool that Bob got the Donkey Kong high score and one of them even wanted to be his girlfriend for a few a weeks or so before before she decided to move to away from Mark Halperin and his horrible columns.

    Then Bob and Chez walked out of the pizza shop and rode off together on their bikes still kind of angry at one another because Chez spilled the chocolate milk even though it was an accident but Bob didn’t know that because he was distracted by the Donkey Kong high score so he was still mad. They started ramming each other on their bikes while the townspeople watched kind of like Ben-hur but then Bob rammed Chez really hard and he fell of his bike and landed in one of his girlfriends’ laps then she started giggling and Chez was embarrassed because he always wanted to look cool but Bob made him look uncool so he got even madder and was like “Hey Bob your comics suck that you draw for the school paper so that means you suck” and then Bob got really mad and peeled out on his bike spraying dirt all over Chez and his 3,000 girlfriends before he rode off and said “Fine Chez looks like you’re stupid anyway.”

    The next day at school Bob walked down the hallway to Mr. Geigher’s science class and sat down next to his lab partner who was actually Chez. They did the thing where they wouldn’t look at one another and the teacher didn’t notice because he didn’t care and said “Okay class let’s get ready to dissect those vascular plants get out your dissector selectors” so then everyone in class did except for Bob and Chez because they were so mad and didn’t until the teacher told them to or they would get expelled. So then Bob and Chez started dissecting the Plants but Bob made a cartoon about Chez on the chalkboard that showed a bunch of girls laughing at Chez so then Chez got mad and slapped the plant off the table and into Bob’s face spilling plant guts all over Bob and making him really disgusted so then Bob ran out of the room while Chez sat there with his arms across his chest looking real tough but feeling weird because everyone was staring at him like he was made of helium or something. Bob ran to the bathroom and threw an firecracker down the toilet and just when he did Mr. Geigher walked in and used the toilet and it blew up crap water everywhere flooding the whole school and Mr. Geigher flew down the hallway bodysurfing on the toilet water while everyone laughed and cheered making Bob look like a hero again. Chez got mad but didn’t care because Bob still had plant guts on him so they went outside into the front yard of the school and started yelling at each other and everyone watched because they thought there might be a fight or something but then the Principal came out and was like “Alright you two that’s enough or it’s the chair for both of you” so then Bob and Chez did the thing where they shook hands without looking at each other and then walked away.

    Later on Bob went to the tree house at the secret spot but when he got there Chez had all 30,000 of his girlfriends there and Bob started freaking out because no girls were supposed to be allowed at their club but then Chez was like “Back off they’re my guests” and Bob was like “No they’re not” so then they started throwing Bazooka Joe Bubble Gum at each other until there were none left and they were tired until all of the sudden a thunderstorm broke out and lightning struck the treehouse and everyone started screaming because everything was on fire and fire is scary so then Bob and Chez were hanging off the ledge of the last plank of the treehouse and then Bob and Chez were like “Dude we’ve got to work together to get through this” so then they did and escaped amazingly as the tree house burst into blue flames because that’s the color of flames lightning hits a secret tree house. They forgot about the chocolate milk Bat Guy comic incident and went out for some pizza even though it was 4 am and all the pizza shops were closed so they broke into the same pizza shop from before because they felt like it and since they were both Italian they instantly knew how to make pizza that was so great the next day they bought the store and everyone was impressed and all of Chez’s 300,000,000 girlfriends came to the store to eat all the pizza and sit around staring at him. In the end the victors triumphed and pretty much everything was good because the bad guys were nowhere in sight because Bob used the Snark Rocket of Justice..

    Flash forward about 30 years or so. One day Bob and Chez got into an argument on Facebook. It was stupid.

    But they put it behind them anyway.

    The End

    *****

    Note: The above one-draft story is partially based on true events. Audiences are expected to discern for themselves which parts are true and consequently e-mail Bob and Chez telling them not to have aimless fights on any form of Facebook or Myspace or Friendster or telegram morse code ever again.

    Good night.

    • http://www.twitter.com/bobcesca_go Bob Cesca

      HAAAAHHA!